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Wednesday, 3 September 2014

The Royal Sands Development on the Pleasurama Site in Ramsgate, a long story.

I guess the first question here is; do the council have any
say if Cardy take over SFP and start developing the site? My guess would be
that the answer here is not much as the whole basis for the council taking back
the site is that work on the development has stopped, so if work starts again
there probably wouldn’t be that much the council could do about it.

It has always been my take that there isn’t much mileage in
going down the legal obligations of the developer route, however there are
public safety issues relating to the cliff façade and the sea defences there
that really need resolving.

The cliff façade structure behind the site wasn’t designed
with a large residential development next to it in mind, and it is very
unlikely that any of it would last for as long as a new development, even if
the council threw a few million pounds at it now.

The council had the cliff façade surveyed in 2005 and the
results of the survey http://www.thanetonline.com/cliff/id2.htm
were that it was in pretty awful condition then, needed immediate repairs, but
that it has a short serviceable life.

Obviously with the major Royal Sands Development plans
passed this survey wasn’t good news for the council, the real rub here is that
to maintain the cliff wall for the expected life of the development, around 100
years, you need enough space to be able to knock down parts of the cliff wall and
rebuild it.

The concrete cliff wall is about 20 metres or about 65 feet
high and about a metre or 3 feet thick, the real problem is that the back of
the development is about 20 metres or about 65 feet high and will be about 4
metres or 12 feet away from the cliff.

However you look at this one I don’t think you could really
demolish areas of the cliff wall without having a clear space in front of it of
around 7 metres or about 20 feet, this is mainly because of the problems
associated with big lumps of concrete falling from around 65 feet up in the
air. I would doubt that anyone would need a diagram here, but essentially the
council have dug themselves a hole and I don’t see any easy way out of it.

Anyway in 2007 the council had the cliff wall surveyed
again, see http://www.thanetonline.com/cliff/id3.htm
I think they were hoping that its condition would have improved, obviously it
hadn’t, so the council decided to find the money to repair the wall around a
million pounds with SFP paying about £100,000 and in 2008 they started on the
work, this generated yet another report http://www.thanetonline.com/cliff/id4.htm
work finished on this in October 2009.

In January 2010 the council decided that they would repair
the bulging bit, this was effectively a £20,000 repair to the £1m repair.

Removing the panel there involved large lumps of chalk and
concrete blocks being hacked out by a JCB with a spike on the end, as they fell
as far as about 20 feet from the cliff face I guess they would have seriously
damaged the new development had it already been built.

At around the same time I discussed the cliff issue with
Cardy’s MD and he went and had a look at the situation, frankly he wasn’t very
happy about the quality of the repair to the repair, but much more importantly
he was concerned about the whole state of that end of the cliff wall.

He made a few inspection holes in the front of the cliff
wall which showed that all wasn’t well with the rest of it and he also dug a
hole next to one of the concrete support pillars to see what the foundations
were like.

Well I went on site and had a look down the hole and took
some more pictures and made some more fuss.

In the end the council’s engineer decided that there was
nothing wrong with the cliff façade structure so Cardy started work on the
site, rumour has it that they started each working day by looking carefully for
more cracks in the cliff wall.

I had various bumpy rides with the council over the
condition of the cliff but nothing serious was ever done to further improve its
condition.

I made a lot of fuss about the cliff through 2011, mainly
because a lot of new cracks were appearing in the cliff wall and in 2012 the
council surveyed it again, here is the survey http://www.thanetonline.com/cliff/id14.htm
this survey recommended what looks like about £100,000 more work which the
council didn’t do.

I guess anyone who lives in Ramsgate knows that the state of
the cliff wall has deteriorated since 2012.

Somehow if the Royal Sands goes ahead the cliff issue will
have to be resolved, you can build next to a chalk cliff where the building
forms part of the cliff support structure, like Marina Esplanade, Harbour
Parade or Military Road, it would however be most inadvisable to build 12 feet
away from an unsupported chalk cliff.

On to the flood and storm issues, when the Royal Sands plans
were submitted there was considerable doubt about both the height of the
building relative to the top of the cliff and the baseline of the building
relative to the high tide mark.

As far as I could see, as the same paving would be used as
was going to be used for the old Pleasurama arcade, then the baseline would be
the same. I worked for Pleasurama when it belonged to Associated Leisure and
during the 1978 storm most of the front was smashed in and the front part,
which was lower than the rest of the arcade, the bit that had once been The
Long Bar, was flooded with sea water.

The arcade owners resolved the main problem, which was
mixing seawater with the electrics associated with fruit machines and pintables
by turning this area into an American pool area, pool tables at that time were
purely mechanical.

Now I had concerns that the sea water here would stir up the
cars parked at this level and they would bump into the pillars supporting the
new building with unfortunate results, so I asked the environment agency to
look into the issue.

At this time the EA hadn’t received plans with levels above
high tide on them and frankly I don’t think it occurred to them that anyone
would build on the foreshore without some sort of risk assessment. However they
duly promised to get the council to send them plans with levels above sea level
on them. This all took a very long time and eventually in 2008 the EA wrote to
the developer and to the council, see http://michaelsbookshop.com/ea/id2.htm

The situation at this point being that while the EA couldn’t
make the developer get a flood risk assessment they wanted one: “And whilst we
accept that this development already has planning permission, we would highly
recommend that a full FRA is undertaken which could inform appropriate
resilience and resistance measures.”

Anyway although no FRA was undertaken there was some
compromise and the developer agreed to fit shutters to the front of the
building and to raise the level of the road at the back of the building, both
to stop the seawater sweeping round the back of it and to make it easer for
people to escape if there was a very big wave.

The raising of the road at the back had another benefit,
which was as the bottom of the cliff wall didn’t reach down to the proposed new
level of the site, without raising the level of the road, such foundations as
the cliff wall had would be left hanging in mid air.

Now all through the various issues relating to the
development going back to the initial plans in 2003 the assumption was that the
development’s foundations would be piled, first driven piles and then after the
2005 report when the engineers decided that pile driving could bring down the
cliff, bored piles.

To the layman this means that the building would either be
nailed or screwed to the ground and by the ground here I mean the chalk bedrock
that Thanet is made of.

The ground at the site is made up of three layers, the chalk
bedrock, the sand beach that formed on top of this as the cliff eroded and on
top of this the chalk spoil from the railway tunnel which was spread on top of
the beach to bring the site up to above the high tide level when it became a
station in 1860.

So you have something that looks very like a cheese sandwich
the top slice being lose chalk, the cheese being sand and the bottom slice
being chalk bedrock.

Anyway when work started on the foundations in 2009 the
developer decided not to use piled foundations but to use concrete load
spreading pads, sitting on the sand or the cheese part of the sandwich.

There are various possible reasons as to why they did this,
before this happened the MD of Cardy told me that the pile boring team would go
on site and all the foundations would go in very quickly, the whole foundation
job taking about six weeks.

I am going with two options here. One being that the
developer financing the site couldn’t put together the money to pay for a pile
boring contractor so a slower method was used that could be financed as the job
progressed. The other being that test boring showed that the chalk bedrock was unsuitable
for piles, the bread in the bottom slice wasn’t properly baked and was all full
of air water and mud.

Whatever the reason the foundations that have been built are
sitting on the cheese and not screwed into the bottom slice. The real
difference here is that the bottom slice, the chalk bedrock, can’t go anywhere,
but the cheese, the sand was laid down by the sea, so the sea can wash it away
again.

Anyway I got on to the MD of Cardy and said what about the
foundations on the cheese, he told me that they had been properly designed to
support the weight of the building sitting on the sand and I said that I agreed
with him but had any investigation been made into the structural integrity of
the sea defence.

In other words the pads were big enough not to sink into the
cheese, like snowshoes but what worried me was what was holding the cheese in
place, anyway I said I would find out about the sea defence, design,
maintenance record and so on.

At this point I think both of us assumed that the coloured
concrete and the new promenade formed a new sea defence built and maintained by
the environment agency.

Let me be absolutely clear here, virtually all of the isle
of Thanet that has sea defences, have concrete ones the foundations of which
are sunk into the chalk bedrock and these are built, maintained and regularly
inspected by the environment agency, I don’t think any of these modern sea
defences here have ever failed. So I don’t think there was any reason for
anyone to think anything else.

Anyway I got onto the EA who said that although the sea
defence beyond Augusta Stairs was theirs, and was modern and properly
maintained, the sea defence between Augusta Stairs and the harbour wasn’t
theirs and belonged to TDC who were responsible for maintaining it, so the EA
had no records relating to it.

So I got onto the council’s engineer and asked for the sea
defence plans and maintenance record. This all took a very long time and I had
to resort to a foi request, so by the time I got the reply most of the foundations
had already been built.

The reply was that the sea defence was the angled stone
paving laid on the side of the pile of chalk by the railway company in 1860 and
that the council had no design drawings or maintenance plan for it. The new
coloured concrete steps and promenade were purely decorative, didn’t form any
sort of sea defence and just sat on the pile of lose chalk.

I sent this information to the MD of Cardy and subsequently
tried on numerous occasions to talk to him about the problem, but he never
replied and was always in a meeting when I phoned up.

Now at the moment this isn’t really much of a problem
because the sea hardly ever makes contact with the sea defence due to Ramsgate
Sands being in the way.

Ramsgate Sands are formed by the shelter of Ramsgate Harbour
which was finished in about 1790 and from 1790 until 1915 a period of around
125 years there was no accumulation of sand above the high tide mark, from 1860
until 1915 a period of 55 years the sea defence of sloping slabs on the pile of
lose chalk appears to have worked fine with the waves breaking against it at
high tide, I can’t find any record of it failing.

In 1915 there was a very real threat of invasion and
Ramsgate Sands were defended with tank traps and barbed wire which held the
sand in place and the beach started to increase in size, with the part in front
of the Pleasurama site getting a build up of sand above the high tide mark, so
the sea never came in contact with the sea defence. This all happened again in
1940, obviously whether this large build up of sand would be seen as sufficient
sea defence for a development with an expected life of 100 years is open to
debate, but at least it would have given a lot of time for sea defence
decisions to be made if it started to seriously erode.

Unfortunately in the 1970s much of the sand and the old
barbed wire and tank traps holding it in place was removed for the building of
Port Ramsgate and my assumption was that eventually the remaining sand would
erode back to the level caused by the shelter of Ramsgate Harbour. This would
mean that the sea would once again be breaking against the 1860 sea defence.

Now last winter most of Ramsgate Sands vanished and if only
half as much vanished this winter or the next one then the 1860 sea defence
once again have the sea breaking against it.

This sea defence was one of two built as part of the railway
expansion from Herne Bay to Ramsgate in 1860, the other one the same railway
company built was between Reculver and Minnis, during one of the largest storms
in this area in 1953 the sea defence between Reculver and Minnis failed
resulting in the loss ten square miles of land and four miles of railway track
in one night.

Anyway that is the story, the problem is how to get some
understanding of the implications across to the council, the councillors and
the new developer.

16 comments:

So Michael current leases state the Council retain responsibility for cliff repairs which is bonkers as leases when Godden had Pleasurama that was the responsibility of the leaseholder. Any renegotiated deal with Cardy should get the maintenance returned to the leaseholder and when completed the freeholder (cabinet says freehold is as good as sold)Personally FORS position is the freehold should be in TDC's hands and we will campaign for that

Barry I would guess there is some complex bargaining to be done here based on the pressure the council have applied by starting the process of terminating the development agreement.

Underlying all of this is that right from the beginning the council and the developer have sidelined Ramsgate residents and their wishes.

I think the council’s main objective is to get as much money as they can for the site rather than deliver something beneficial for Ramsgate.

What the developer’s objective here has been is still something of a mystery and perhaps it is something that we will never unravel. The strange factor that having taken on building between an unsupported chalk cliff and the sea, which must be one of the most demanding places to build anything, no evidence that the developer has ever built anything else has ever emerged…

Where we go with Cardy and the cliff I just don’t know, they just don’t have a history of creating building disasters and I guess they must know that the council just don’t have the funds to maintain the cliff to a standard suitable for people to live under it for the next 100 years.

Certainly in purely economic terms building the development and then trying to keep the cliff patched up doesn’t make any sense at all. I would guess if anyone seriously wanted to build a large residential development under a cliff, the first thing they would do is build a substantial cliff support structure that they expected to last for roughly the same length of time as the development.

Obviously I have been revisiting all the aspects of the project and there are parts of it that seem so bonkers I feel there must be something here I have completely missed

I had always thought the selling of the freehold was something dreamed up by the tories in 2006 however having reread the Ramsgate Renaissance opportunity written to bring developers onboard in 2002 it clearly states the Labour Party were going to sell the freehold

This is like sitting down to find that the movie is the same one you have watched several times before with the identical ridiculous storylines thrown in to try and make the plot more exciting. The cliff about to become an avalanche, the missing FRA which must surely result in tidal waves and enormous machine plant, that just happened to have been left on the beach by some over indulged rich kid, hurled into the new structure whilst her indoors shrieks "Darling, there is a crane in the bath."

One can but hope, but the resurrection of Pleasurama can only lead to more repeats, as if the BBC do not provide enough already, around the blogs and more wild speculation, oft supported by the fact that the writer spent a short time with an engineering firm. Why can't we all just accept that being Thanet and a Margate based council looking at Ramsgate, doom and gloom is the inevitable result regardless of the ramblings of the Ramsgate purveyor of books or the worthies of FORS. As the missionary Wickes declared "You're all going to die!"

Bit hard to say Barry, I guess a problem would be the large amount of anon comments, which I guess are due mostly to the counter on the sidebar. What I am getting at here is that I now get so many that don’t comply to the blog guidelines below that as soon as I get to an obscene swearword, libel, spam and so on I delete without reading the rest of the comment. My day off today and I would think I had the best part of 100, managed with my mobile where I happened to be.

I must stress here that this only applies to the anon comments, I am much more careful in reading the comments made by known local commentators, I very seldom have to delete any of these.

Anyway for anon comment to get through the net it has to be compliant so no one would have noticed any non compliant comment as it wouldn’t have appeared.

I suppose these great yawn, it’s all so beneath me comments boarder on trolling, but sorting out this sort of thing requires the sort of semantics that I just don’t have the time for.

William and John with the Pleasurama site yes it will be here we go again here because it is a major and important local issue which I understand and therefore feel duty bound to post about. Perhaps you would review the situation read the post properly and see if you have any worthwhile comments to make relating to the problem.

On the main issue here which is the development, the situation has changed radically as we seem to be moving from having a developer with no track record of having developed anything, to a firm that are one of the best and most experienced developers in the area.

The underlying problem though is that Cardy found serious flaws with the condition of the cliff façade, wrote a report detailing these flaws, see the link in the post, and then carried on with the development without addressing the cliff condition.

They also appear to have ignored the discovery that the sea defence was in an unknown condition despite the fact that it is what holds the sand supporting the building’s foundations in place.

Now it may very well be that this was because of pressure from the developer for whom they were main contractors, however now I feel reluctant to support them until they clarify their position regarding the safety issues relating to the development.

The fact remains that the planning consent remains and is likely to remain valid if the council repossesses the site and then market it another developer, and if this happens it is very unlikely that the other developer would be as good as Cardy.

SG I wouldn’t think exaggerating the problems is going to help anyone, the cliff is about 65 feet high and the ground there isn’t industrial slag but chalk spoil, which would be very unstable laid on the sand, that the foundations sit on, which would normally be very stable if it wasn’t for the uncertainty over the sea defence.

Reckon Cardy, with their reputation to uphold, will investigate all your concerns before they put their name to this project as both developer and builder. Do not disagree with Michael's and Barry's assumption that all the world are idiots when applied to councillors, but not in the case of a commercial builder who wants to stay in business.

Why not get Anne Gloag to take over the Pleasurama development and why she is at it she could also buy the Port of Ramsgate and provide a worthwhile asset for the town, A bit like being the Roger de Hann of Folkestone.

SENSIBLE the choices here were driven piles or bored piles, there was never any question of percussion augured piling as the boring would be through sand, chalk and possibly clay – that is assuming Thanet’s geology hasn’t changed over night and we are now living on granite.

For those of you who don’t have SENSIBLE’s technical knowledge of drilling holes, this is the difference between using an ordinary electric drill to make a hole and using a hammer drill, and as I am sure most people will understand you don’t need to use a hammer drill to make a hole in chalk or sand, in fact the vibration would make the situation around the hole into a mess.

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